The President for change who was going to close the concentration camp in Guantanamo has done a complete U-turn by not only failing to close the death camp within 12 months but has now reinstated “Military Trials”.

The logic of course is that these men held for almost ten years, with no charge are too dangerous to free or impossible to convict due to evidence obtained through torture. The Americans refuse to try them in civilian courts where the burden of proof required is far lower than in a military kangaroo court.

You would have thought that prosecuting Osama Bin Laden’s personal bodyguard for close to a decade would have been an open and shut case. Despite all the hype, American military courts could not prosecute Abu Jandal and today he is a free man.

Then there’s the case of Saber Lahmer, one of six men kidnapped by US agents in Sarajevo and taken to Guantanamo. After being held without charge for over eight years they were acquitted of all terrorism related charges.

Guantanamo’s role has been far removed from making the world a safer place by keeping dangerous terrorists locked up, instead it acts as a focal point of an unjust foreign policy, that acts as a rallying call for those who despise the hypocrisy in America’s actions.

The White House may well say that it has made the system fairer, but it’s simply a return to square one.

America knows better.

Like Johnny Cochran said during the OJ Simpson murder trial, “If the glove does not fit…you must acquit”

The Akh urges Obama to stop being a hypocrite, try these men in a civilian court, you cannot hold anyone without charge indefinitely.

House majority leader Eric Cantor (Republican) is desperately trying to explain away the promise he made to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that he would side, as a policy, with Israel against the President of the United States of America.

Cantor huddled with Netanyahu just prior to the Prime Minister’s meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton was expected to reaffirm the American commitment to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and opposition to Israeli settlement expansion.

“Eric stressed that the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the Administration and what has been, up until this point, one party rule in Washington….He made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other.”

For now, forget Cantor’s ridiculous assertion that the security of Israel and the United States are “reliant upon the other.”

No, the United States provides Israel with the security assistance to survive – it is not the other way around.

But lay that aside.

It is Cantor’s statement of loyalty to Netanyahu that is the shocker.

Specifically, it is his promise that he would ensure that Republicans in the US House of Representatives “will serve as a check” on US Middle East policy.

“remember an opposition leader telling a foreign leader, in a personal meeting, that he would side, as a policy, with that leader against the President.”

Kampeas was clearly shocked, but he was understating the enormity of Cantor’s offense.

Cantor’s pledge of allegiance to a foreign leader would be remarkable, and deeply offensive, even if the foreign country in question were Canada or the United Kingdom, our two closest allies with whom we have few policy differences.

The United States has major policy differences with Israel, and has had them for decades, most notably over settlements, the occupied West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, etc.

Israel is also the largest recipient of US foreign aid in the world, which means that the President of the United States has every right to express those differences firmly and clearly.

On the other hand, no American official – by any stretch of the imagination – has the right to tell the government of Israel, or any foreign government, that he stands with the foreign leader against his own president.

It is one thing to oppose particular US policies; it is quite another to tell a foreign leader, “I’m with you, not my president.” Of course, Cantor was just being honest.

Although he does oppose virtually all of President Obama’s policies – he’s a Republican and that is what Republicans do – he supports 100 per cent of Israel’s policies.

And although an extreme partisan domestically, when it comes to Israel, he supports whichever government is in power.

He believes in the right to criticise this government, just not that one.

Cantor’s mistake was not telling Prime Minister Netanyahu what everyone knows is true anyway, but telling the world what he said.

This is the classic Washington definition of a gaffe (i.e., inadvertently speaking an inconvenient truth).

In this case, the gaffe produced a firestorm.

And this is where I consider the possibility that Cantor simply doesn’t understand what he’s doing.

After all, he has been an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) cutout since he first was elected to office.

He’s been to more AIPAC meetings than he can probably count.

And he should have figured out by now that the lobby is extremely careful, obsessively careful, to always empathise loyalty to the United States while simultaneously endorsing Israeli policies that undermine our foreign policy objectives.

AIPAC officials never, ever, say that when push comes to shove their loyalty is with Israel not the United States. In fact, the accusation that this is the case is the charge AIPAC hates most.

But the soon-to-be Majority Leader came right out and said it: Israel, right or wrong.

It took a few days for Cantor to understand how utterly offensive his statement was. He might have heard from a few Tea Party types who, say what you will about them, tend to take their patriotism seriously.

So Cantor explained that he was misunderstood. His inconvenient truth, his gaffe, was replaced by a laughable untruth.

The Manufacturing of Consent to invade Iran continues, the consensus being built should be noted for its unreliability in its content, an even more grave consequence is that these “facts” are getting major airtime where it counts, if you read my post yesterday, then you’ll know all about how the media can frame the discussion.

“Iran’s political turmoil has prompted a growing number of the country’s officials to defect or leak information to the West, creating a new flow of intelligence about its secretive nuclear program.

Some of the most significant new material has come from informants, including scientists and others with access to Iran’s military programs, who are motivated by antipathy toward the government and its suppression of the opposition movement after a disputed presidential election in June, according to current and former officials in the United States and Europe who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence gains.

In recent weeks, U.S. officials have acknowledged that an Iranian nuclear scientist defected to the West in June. Shahram Amiri, 32, vanished while on a religious pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia and has provided spy agencies with details about sensitive programs, including a long-hidden uranium-enrichment plant near the city of Qom, intelligence officials and Europe-based diplomats said.

Amiri is described by some as the most significant Iranian defector since Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Asgari, a former deputy defense minister and Revolutionary Guard Corps commander who switched sides during a 2007 trip to Turkey.”

My office has received a request from an Iranian scientist who is currently staying in a friendly country, by means of an Israeli Jewish woman of Iranian birth, Kara revealed in a interview panel appearance in Ramat Gan. I am making an effort to assist in this matter because I believe in helping anyone to remove the strategic and nuclear threat upon the enlightened and democratic world.”

“Israel weighs merits of solo attack on Iran”, alongside a fully interactive demo of the routes Israeli attack jets can fly to attack Iran. They all would require Israeli planes to fly through U.S.-controlled airspace in Iraq or through the airspace of U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia or Turkey, which could cause serious political consequences for Israel.

“A third factor is whether Israeli planes would need to fly over Iraqi air space to reach Iran. The U.S. still has air bases around the region, and might not want to recognize Israeli planes as friendly. Thus Obama instills uncertainty into foreign policy just he prolongs the recession by instilling uncertainty into domestic policy on medical costs and taxes.”

To say that The Akh is dismayed by this propaganda would be an understatement of immense proportions.

The facilitator of every major violent event thus far in the twenty-first century have been based on lies told by democratic governments. The lies are continuing to be told, about the supposed “existential” menace posed by Iran to Israel, America and (if you believe some European leaders) to Western Europe.

The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was motivated by the neo-conservative illusion that the Iraqi people would welcome invasion and become a force for democracy, and friends to Israel. Instead, the death of Saddam Hussein and destruction of his government, the wrecking of Iraqi urban society and the country’s infrastructure and industry, which will take years to reconstruct, ignited anarchic insurrection and sectarian conflict, delivering the country into the power and influence of a much larger and more important enemy of both the United States and Israel, Iran. Another lesson about lies, one might have thought.

If Iran does pursue a nuclear capability, once again it is to deter attack. Precisely the same objection exists to theories of Iranian aggression as to those lies put forward in 2002-2003 about Iraq posing a nuclear menace to the world.

Once more the threat is a polemical invention, intended to frighten American, Israeli (and European) voters, and prompt a pre-emptive attack on Iran. The reason Mr. Gates reports his uncertainties to the president is that he too recognizes that the conflict with Iran is constructed from fictions – which, as with the lies about Iraq, may turn into another war, whose consequences are sure to be worse for all concerned than the fiasco and tragedy of the Iraqi invasion and subsequent slaughter.

Israeli prime minister Netanyahu cancelled his proposed ass licking trip to Washington upon finding out that he would have to attend a conference on the spread of nuclear weapons, fearing Israel would be singled out over its well known but undeclared nuclear programme.

Seeing as the zionist regime is trying to manufacture consent for a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s supposed nuclear programme, it would be extremely double faced to cry foul when the Israeli regime has held a nuclear stockpile since the mid 1980’s, a fact that had Israeli nuclear weapon designer Mordechai Vanunu was locked up for 18 years when he tried to expose this fact.

“We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force.

Our armed forces are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under.“

Game Theory dictates that the U.S. would never attack a country that has a proven nuclear deterrent.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) recently condemned the Israeli regime for its use of depleted uranium, a radioactive material, which causes cancer and deformities, stating that:

“The quantity of depleted uranium may amount to no less than 75 tons found in the soil and subsoil in the Gaza Strip”

"Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil & believes in Allah has grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold that never breaks. And Allah hears & knows all things."
(The Qur'an, Al-Baqara, 2: 256)

“Political authority & religion are kin brothers, neither would stand but by its companion; because religion is the foundation of political power & its pillar, & political power is the guardian of religion; political power is not established with a foundation & religion cannot be implemented without authority.”
- Shaykh Muhammad al-Yaqoubi

"War is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means" - Clausewitz

"O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise each other). Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things)."
(The Qur'an, Al Hujurat, 49: 13)